PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Slithered back recently into the lexicon
of the Bush administration, Israel's Ohmert crowd, and their supporters
in the corporate media, a new meme to help you better understand what
the dated, "War on Terror" really means, and what it demands of the
citizenry: "Islamo-Fascism," and its interchangeable synonyms, "Islamic Fascism," and "Islamic Terrorism" are the action phrases of the day, and as with much of the language heard coming from these actors over the past years, the au courant terms describe best their authors' values and methods.

www.PEJ.org

War, Crime, Propaganda, and Judeo-Fascism

C. L. Cook

PEJ News
August 31, 2006

We needn't have witnessed the systematic destruction of Lebanon last
month to appreciate the nature of Israel, we need only remember the
ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian peoples, a project
escalated this summer and quaintly dubbed by Israel 'Operation Summer Rains'.

Those "rain drops" are naturally not water, but a torrent of blazing
steel and lead. These "rains" don't bring life to the hills, rivers,
orchards, and beasts beneath them, but terrible death and heart-rending
loss. And, for the Palestinians there is no umbrella, they are caught
in the storm; no United Nations troops are urged to protect them from
the Rainmakers across the wall.

The Palestinians,
those surviving the repeated pogroms perpetrated by their neighbour to
remain depite the murderous, and continuing Diaspora, are left to
scratch a living out of the rubble, while Israeli tower guards snipe at
their children, and rockets destroy their civic leaders and any
unfortunates within a hundred yards of them. Daily, news of the freshly
killed in Gaza and the West Bank could be heard before a shot was fired
in Lebanon.

Every day, more civilians killed. Remember the family cut down while they barbecued on the beach?
Remember the family dismembered in their flat by a "stray" Israeli
missile? Recall the doctor kidnapped from Gaza, with his young son
before Palestinians attacked a military outpost, killing several
soldiers, and abducting one?

No? How about the campaign of "Sonic Straifing" carried out continuously over Gaza commencing last Autumn, (a tactic deployed too against the Lebanese last month)?

What the media and the U.N. have consistently failed to address in the
recent tragedy brought upon Lebanon through the agency of the Israeli
leadership, in collusion with their armourers in America, and callously
carried out by the Israeli military is context. The depth of the United
Nations' abrogation of their duty to justice for peoples and nations,
as presented in the pitiful Resolution 1701 makes clear:
The truth of the matter will not be addressed; Israel will not be
punished for its blatant illegalities; No reproach either offered to
the United States, Canada, and others in the international community
who sanctioned Israel's unilateral destruction and continued blockade
of Lebanon.

Of course these, Israel's signature pursuits, identically apply in Palestine, but are of no issue. Despite Kofi Annan's,
seemingly made suddenly aware of Israel's brutality in occupied
Palestine, harsh words parting directed to the rogue of the region are
meaningless. It's doubtful Kofi's successor to the helm of the U.N.
will waiver from Annan's long-practiced inaction where Israel is
concerned; and, 1701 insures that.

Littered again with Israeli land-mines, uncounted thousands of
unexploded cluster bomb "bomblets," and other munitions, the land and
waters polluted with oil and Depleted Uranium, Lebanon is in ruins.
More than a thousand Lebanese civilian dead counted so far, more to be
discovered when the wreckage of their homes and offices are cleared,
and more being killed and wounded daily by Israel's "left-behind"
ordnance, and not a single line in Resolution 1701 calls on Israel to
make reparations. In fact, that duty, as with the "DMZ- like buffer zone"
is assigned to others, and to be implemented at Israel's pleasure, most
incredibly, while Israeli soldiers continue to occupy portions of
Lebanon.

While rumours of a greater war in the middle east and beyond near
deafening, the United Nations sees fit, at this late date, to reward
recalcitrant, reprobate, scofflaw Israel for its unwarranted aggression
against a sovereign nation. This is, as the soon late-to-be Saddam
Hussein may have called it, "The Mother of All Crimes." And, those
sitting at Nuremberg and Geneva, Washington, London, and Paris agreed.
They explicitly cite: "Unprovoked war of aggression" as the ultimate
war crime, a crime against the peace from which all others follow. Yet
today, neither the United Nations, nor the European Union, are willing
to apply the law. America stands silent on this too, naturally, as it
has stood silent so many times in the past, opting instead to further
embolden its "client state" to loose ever more American-made munitions upon its neighbours.

With the November mid-term elections in the U.S. drawing close, George W. Bush has
brushed off the old "Islamic Fascists" doggerel in hope to carry again
his disreputable Republican regime to control of both Houses of
Congress. It proves the desire, and desperation of his administration
for further wars. In an article, linked here,
Toronto Star writer, Eric Margolis cites, Colombia University Professor
Robert Paxton's 2004 book, 'The Anatomy of Fascism,' and Paxton's
definition of fascism as:

"1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional
solutions; 2. belief one's group is the victim, justifying any action
without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural
leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4.
right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral
restraint; 5. fear of foreign 'contamination.'"

As Margolis observes: "Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign
conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear,
anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded
ideological traitors."

With wars already burning in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and battered
Lebanon teetering, all these of the making of the Bush administration
and it's allies, those same criminals would call the world to arms to
fight the "Islamic Fascists," proving again the verity of the
schoolyard rejoinder: "What you say is what you are."

C. L. Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.